THE E-GOVERNMENT ARTIFACT IN THE CONTEXT OF A DEVELOPING COUNTRY: TOWARDS A NOMADIC FRAMEWORK

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with exploring alternative conceptualizations of the e-government artifact relevant to developing countries in Africa. The premise is that e-government, as an artifact of human conception, remains relatively poorly developed at the levels of theory, methodologies and practice. The investigation is focused on two problematic areas of e-government: its conceptualization and its operationalization as an artifact. There is evidence to suggest that conceptualization of e-government takes place at various levels : international, national, local. The thesis therefore explores how e- government is taking form by focusing on the following research question: "How is the e-government artifact conceptualized in the context of a developing country"? The analysis draws on various perspectives; some of which are grounded on empirical results of the study, while others are based on an analysis of literature. Under the alienating conditions of social exclusion, the emergent e-government artifact emerges as an evolving and technical artifact, with strong managerialist orientations of augmenting and reinforcing central governments control over its polity . To achieve this defining logic, the focus or ideology for addressing the social problem of governance is that of information Taylorism with an emphasis on economic rationality and some form of political rationality. Two consequences are highlighted: • an evolution of public administration towards a technocracy, and • increasing the efficiency of the bureaucracy through managerialization. To address the shortcomings of this artifact concept, the study further presents literature and insights from prior analyses to underpin a nomadic e-government model for building information infrastructures (NECE Framework). The emphasis of the framework is on the need to adopt long term organizing visions in building these infrastructures by focusing on using the existing installed base as a foundation. The nomadic framework, anchored on strong modular design borrowed from an information infrastructure perspective, is clustered around three major layers of building confident local communities ; building nomadic networks of governance and building flexible infrastructures . The 'glue', cementing these layers elevates a critical need for building social, human, digital and physical resources targeting the individuals, various organizing forms and formal institutions, services and physical infrastructure respectively. Such an approach to building an e-government information infrastructure is postulated to minimize the unintended negative social implications of its adoption.